The Housing Bottom: From 'Bold Call' To Consensus In Just Four Months

Less than four months ago, I wrote The Housing Bottom is Here and I pointed out that the house price data had a significant lag so we had to look at other data for clues. The post title refers to the many emails I received back in February: "bold call", "gutsy call", "you are insane" ... and many more. I could still be wrong, but it sounds like Robert Shiller and Karl Case are coming around to a similar view. Here are couple of quotes from a CNBC interview this morning (video below): Karl Case: "We lag of course - January, February and March moving average - and so we lag, and the indicators for the last three or four months on the quantity side have been real positive. We look like a bottom. You have to pick to find real negatives." CR: As I've noted before, this is just a possible bottom for nominal prices
(not adjusted for inflation). We could see further real price declines, as Professor Shiller noted: Robert Shiller on CNBC: "[The futures] go out to 2014. It is projecting something like 2% or 3% per year [increase], which by the way, is just the inflation rate. If you correct for the inflation rate, they [futures] are predicting no action." Earlier on house prices
:• Case Shiller: House Prices fall to new post-bubble lows in March NSA• Real House Prices and Price-to-Rent Ratio at late '90s Levels